Hyacinth Losers

No Internet

2008-08-09T13:39:00.002-05:00

Take Out the Sausage

2008-07-31T19:12:00.004-05:00

The Cubs' four-game sweep of the Brewers tops Randall Simon's assault and battery of runner dressed as a Giant Italian Sausage as my all-time favorite moment at Robo-County/Plastic Slide Park. I didn't have animosity toward the Brewers until I went home last summer to a town full of Brewer fans where previously they had been rarely sighted, even during the Green Bay Packers off season. I attributed the proliferation to first-place frenzy (they had two or three games on the Cubs at about this time last year). I attributed their "knowledge" of baseball to the same impetus for their fandom, that being a lack of substance and desperate delusions. The peak of all this was late night in an all-nite diner (George Webb, a once Wisconsin treasure now gone corporate chain), where one sojourner in the after bar crowd took it upon himself to sit at our table next to Katy, who wore a Cubs hat. He started trash-talking the Cubs, and she started asking him reasonable questions about the merits of his team, which she soon found he hardly knew anything about, not even enough to name a batting order. At this point, my brother and I completely humiliated him to the point that he admitted he knew nothing about baseball, that in truth he envied the Cubs, and slunk off to his pathetic existence, a little more self-aware, but surely that would wear off come football season.

No time these days to write. Frank Fest is a massive entity now, living on its own. If you would like or know of sponsors, contact me. We have non-profit status. Those of you who are participating or requested information will find an email over the weekend, I suspect.

Thanks to those who have ordered Cannibal Books recently. We have nearly enough for a new printer. No striation marks! Faster production! New Pages did I review of issue three. Issue four, by the way, is all filled at 140 pages. Issue five will be a special issue, and that part is still a secret.

Mostly, I'm watching my nephew, pretending I'm a wolf, convincing him that videos on black holes are cooler than video games, and getting exponentially worn out. School nears. I am teaching three classes at the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith and trying to figure out what to do the rest of the week. Bills are fruitful and multiply.

Shafer Light is excellent but not as healthy a choice as Old Style.

Coconut #13 is out and in my feeble estimation the best issue Bruce Covey has produced to date. Check out Claire Donato: Dermatographism will appear in a chapbook on Cannibal Books in 2009.

NPR's streaming of Tom Waits' "Glitter and Doom" concert is the single greatest thing ever put on the internet.

Katy's writing several music reviews; a piece on Frank Sherlock, Brett Evans, & New Orleans for Oxford American; a piece on car wrapping for Northwest Arkansas Business Journal; & preparing to spend the next month on the road updating Rough Guide to the South for Tennessee, the Carolinas, Georgia & Alabama; in addition to putting together a flier for Frank Fest, so things are insane but mostly happy. I'm trying to figure out what to do w/ the middle of August, since classes don't start until the 25th.

Not writing hardly at all, though I have an essay to finish. I heard "no" from the one press where I sent Ordinary Sun, and the second manuscript is "finished" now, so I have two unpublished and unsubmitted books. I don't think that's a problem. Everyone else has a book, so I don't need one.

Adam Clay & Cannibal Books

2008-07-21T08:54:00.003-05:00

As Complete as a Thought Can Be
by Adam Clay
24 pages, hand-sewn, $7

Cannibal Books
flesheatingpoems.blogspot.com

*
An All Star Line Up of My Favorite Soccer Players from My Lifetime

GK Waleter Zenga
D Giuseppe Bergomi
D Franco Baresi
D Andreas Brehme
M Gheorghe Hagi
M Roy Keane
M Zinadine Zindane
M Ruud Gullet
M Diego Maradonna
F George Weah
F Marco Van Basten

Bench
GK Kasey Keller
GK Hans Van Breukelen
D Paolo Maldini
D Cafu
M Jorge Burruchaga
M Paul Gascoigne
M Claudio Caniggia
M Abedi Pele
F Hristo Stoichkov
F Gary Linekar
F Roger Milla

Alternates
D Bixente Lizarazu
M Luis Figo
M Ronaldinho
M Enzo Schifo
F Michel Platini

(announces festival in ozarks)

2008-07-17T16:42:00.003-05:00

The Frank Stanford Literary Festival

October 17 - 19, 2008
Fayetteville, Arkansas

Featuring a Small Press Reading, a panel on Stanford's life and works, a screening of the Stanford biopic It Wasn't a Dream It Was a Flood, a celebratory reading from Stanford's poems, and a marathon reading of The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You

Hosted by
The Burning Chair Readings
Lost Roads Publishers
Fascicle
Typo
&
The Fayetteville Public Library

If you would like to attend, publicize, sponsor, or otherwise query, contact me at frankstanfordfest (at) gmail (dot) com

(Cover image of Battlefield borrowed from Derek White's 5cense).

I Hate the Yankees

2008-07-12T19:08:00.004-05:00

But love Bobby Mercer's HR after Thurman Munson's funeral. Who hits one tomorrow?

Waits

2008-07-12T17:21:00.003-05:00

And I'm lost
And I'm lost
And I'm lost at the bottom of the world
I'm handcuffed to the bishop and the barbershop liar
I'm lost at the bottom of the world

Making books, making books, writing poems. I don't miss New York one bit. I can listen to Tom Waits and drink coffee all day any place. And we got mountains here.

Thai food tonight. I did get a job. Teaching, of course. A curse and a joy. Nothing fancy to say. Read books not blogs.

(announces books)

2008-07-02T20:00:00.006-05:00

flesheatingpoems.blogspot.com
flesheating poems (at) yahoo (dot) com
An aesthetic definition cannot define the hunger.

Roadkill

2008-06-28T05:19:00.003-05:00

A new installment of The Cultural Society is up, w/ "poems from Robert Archambeau, Jon Curley, Norman Finkelstein, Matthew Henriksen, Eric Hoffman, Philip Jenks, Amanda Nadelberg, Peter O'Leary, Gregory Ott, Chuck Stebelton, Shannon Tharp, John Tipton, & Jamie Townsend; & prose from Michael Henson & Tyrone Williams. [They]'ve also got photographs from Cary Conover &Beth Cook, & other images by Derrick Buisch & Sarah Conner. The picks are provided by Jeff Clark & Matthew Henriksen."

I found this out because I can't sleep. There's a storm, which is the positive motivation against sleep, and an irrational fear or brown recluses in the dark, the negative motivation. I love irradiation. The Cultural Society is radiant, though, and if you haven't seen the gorgeous broadsides Zach Barocas puts together, you better ax somebody. They come of white card stock, letter-pressed, and are gorgeous but absolutely simple. They're all about the poems, which are always good ones.

Cannibal 4 is at 90 pages already. I don't know anything about the birds of Arkansas. Blogging does not remedy insomnia. I think I lost a spleen or something back there on the road. It might now look like a smashed armadillo.

Arkansas Update

2008-06-26T02:38:00.007-05:00

I have heard rumors that we're in Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, & Chicago. That's cool. But Alaska would be cooler. I am certain some of our mail has gone to AZ not AR. Tomorrow, I am sending Ammons' Sphere and our new, still unreleased Cannibal Books release (This Ocean, or Oppen Series by Joseph Bradshaw) to a fishing boat in Alaska. Joseph's book, along with the second editions of Ben Mazer's The Foundations of Poetry Mathematics and Thibault Raoult's I'll Say I'm Only Visiting will all be available, along with Melanie Hubbard's Gilbi Winco Swags (we had issues with the cover due to the moved, a bad flash drive, and my more or less temporary insanity, all of which are more or less fixed now). That's amazingly all we have left. Cannibal 3 is gone, pals. Thanks to all of you hardcore supporters. More books en route. That's all I really do these days, other than

1) Work incessantly at local coffee shops, like the one at the Fayetteville Public Library, pictured above, on an essay that has a lot to do with Robert Penn Warren and Fanny Howe, among other
more usual suspects.

2) Look for jobs, which until colleges open up again limits me to the above mentioned coffee shops, liquor stores, and Schlotzky's Deli. Who knew an MFA in poetry would impede monetary sustenance?

3) Writing poems. I do this a lot since the move. I was doing this all night, but now I am writing on a blog, which somehow seems more productive than writing poems (see #2).

4) Katy deeds, like listening to the details of her job searches or exponentially generative freelance writing career.

5) Eating at Petra Cafe or shooting pool at Maxine's Tap Room.

6) Watching the Cubs destroy EVERYONE.

7) Watching the Cubs destroy EVERYONE while I torment Larkin and Louisa.

8) Not engaging in, or at least engaging less often in, the following Brooklyn bad habits: whiskey, excessive drunk text messages, fantasy baseball, Facebook games, walking to the bodega.

9) Using the gained time to read submissions for Typo, Cannibal, and Narwhal. This take a lot of time. I'm also reading Harp & Altar and Fascicle for competitive motivation/inspirational theft.

10) I don't do much else (see #2). I plan to start running and doing yard work tomorrow.

My most solidified recent conclusion, other than that I am broke, is that I need to take reality a little more seriously, but I think that's just my imagination getting lazy.

Cannibal Talks to Cannibal Couple

2008-06-24T11:13:00.004-05:00

Jared White & Farrah Field interviewed by Elisa Gabbert for Ploughshares. Not one Meet Me in St. Louis reference, and no pirates or narwhals either. Not that their presence is lacking.

2008-06-20T16:57:00.002-05:00

I'll trade my vote for a job.

The Brown Recluse Says

2008-06-13T23:11:00.006-05:00

If you want to ruin your day, search for images of brown recluse bites. They live in abundance in Fayetteville. I haven't run into a black widow yet.

Harp & Altar #4 is out, so I'll be busy for a few days.

Sommer Browning has the greatest dancing cat post ever.

In other news, The Frank Stanford Festival is confirmed: October 17th - 19th in Fayetteville, Arkansas. If you would like to receive information on the happenings, drop me a line through Typo, or check back here in July.

The room where I proposed to Katy four years & four days ago

2008-06-09T18:48:00.001-05:00

Sweetheart of the Rodeo by the Birds vs. Sweethearts of the Great Migration by Andrew Hughes

2008-06-08T16:06:00.012-05:00

Artists
Gram Parsons vs. Andrew Hughes

Parsons overdosed; Hughes is alive & well.

SR 0, SGM 1

Pals

Phil Kaufman vs. Michael Schiavo
Kaufman half-charred Parsons' stolen corpse after failing to deliver divorce papers to his wife, who in turn had Gram's body buried, as opposed to the wishes his friend had intended to fulfill; Michael Schiavo doesn't take shit from psychotic "feminists" and would surely incinerate Hughes if asked.

SR o, SGM 2

Bourbon Consumption
Parsons drank Jack Daniels; I'm pretty sure Hughes prefers Kentucky sour mash.

SR 0, SGM 3

Politics

Parsons quit The Byrds in protest of their South African tour; Andrew Hughes I'm pretty sure didn't contribute to the fall of apartheid, though I have no doubt he would have given the opportunity.

SR 1, SGM 3

Winner

Sweethearts of the Great Migration by Andrew Hughes. I'm pretty sure I went on the objective criteria for determining whether to buy a small press chapbook or an alt-country classic album. But you could get both and experience them simultaneously.

Another Reason to Like Venus Zine

2008-06-06T21:12:00.008-05:00

Venus Zine has an article about female-run small presses, and while off the top of my puny, brain-cell depleted head a few great ones got left out, two of my favorites get mentioned: Lame House Books & horse less press. Also, one of my favorite poets appearing lately in the Typo in-box, Claire Donato, wrote the piece. This all makes me wish I was born a woman.

And Katy, who makes me happy I was born a man-child, has an article on the Dickson Street Bookshop forthcoming in Oxford American. I don't have jack forthcoming, not even a job, but in the last week I have read most everything Fanny Howe and CD Wright have written, along w/ about 1/4 of Guy Davenport's Geography of the Imagination, along w/ a bunch of Robert Penn Warren, Frank Stanford, Larry Levis and J. Michael Yates, all in an effort to produce an essay for Harp & Altar later this year. I'm not going to say that is forthcoming because I am an underachiever or disachiever and a ne'er-do-well, especially in prose. I'm also stalking online magazines for Cannibal contributors. I might be stalking you, child. Oh, and I'm hunting a copies of The Third Policeman & A Memoir of Gaudier-Brzeska by Ezra Pound, which always used to appear at the bookshop but haven't since my return.

In more important news, I canoed down the Buffalo River yesterday and stopped eating meat again.

Mich Morgen Jacket

2008-06-04T18:41:00.005-05:00

Blogging at work never worked for me because I worked, but it's Friday, I ain't got no job, and I ain't got shit to do. One of those is true at least. Katy wrote a review of the new My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges. I like the title, though they can never outdo It Still Moves as a title, or the cover art. the new stuff sounds like country helium disco. But way better than Ween's "Japanese Cowboy." I think some people sit down and listen to a new album and decide if they like it. I don't do that. That's how I don't read poems, too. The opinions are automatic. If I start thinking I don't like anything. Especially critics.

The album is streaming on their MySpace page. That's good, because if it was on Facebook you'd get caught playing Scrabulous AND listening to My Morning Jacket. And if you do that at work how could you also write poems for Typo?

Also, Katy and I are ecstatic about Unnameable Books on the cover of The New Yorker:

Confederate Cemetery vs. Marlo's Taco Shack

2008-06-03T15:28:00.003-05:00

I'm living in Arkansas!
I'm writing poetry!
Will someone let me borrow a shotgun!

Good to be out of Brooklyn, among trees and real air. Writing poems and getting caught up w/ Cannibal Books. We shut down orders for the move but are about to start filling again any day, sans Cannibal: Issue Three (sold out), but w/ Joseph Bradshaw's This Ocean, or Oppen Series & reprints of Ben Mazer's The Foundations of Poetry Mathematics and Thibault Raoult's I'll Say I'm Only Visiting. And I'm reading for Cannibal: Issue Four now via flesheatingpoems AT yahoo DOT com.

We're also working on a Frank Stanford Festival for October here in Fayetteville, but that's still sort of a secret.

I'm writing tons, watching the Cubs, and cutting down honey suckle trees.

2008-05-13T10:55:00.002-05:00

Typo 11

Paige Ackerson-Kiely
Lucy Biederman
Christopher Deweese
Farrah Field
Andrew Grace
Jane Gregory
Kirsten Kashock
Karla Kelsey
Dorothea Lasky
Kristi Maxwell
Karyna McGlynn
Patrick Morrissey
Michael Robins
Eleni Sikelianos
Matvei Yankelevich

Goose Up!

2008-05-07T19:39:00.002-05:00

The Burning Chair Readings
present

Goose Up!
Poetry!
at East Coast Aliens

Saturday, May 17th, 3-8pm
Doors 2:30 pm, $6

Ana Božičević
John Coletti
Kate Greenstreet
Sarah Gridley
Katy Henriksen
Shannon Jonas
Jennifer Kronovet
Mark Lamoureux
Timothy Liu
Chris Martin
Jess Mynes
Cate Peebles
Christopher Rizzo
Matthew Rohrer
Frank Sherlock
Joanna Sondheim
Shanxing Wang
Rebecca Wolff

w/ projections by
Stephen Hilger

& music from
The Hadacol

Hosted by Cannibal, Harp & Altar, Saltgrass & Tight

East Coast Aliens
216 Franklin St
btwn. Green & Huron
Greenpoint, Brooklyn
G to Greenpoint Ave (exit at India St)
B61/B43/B42

eastcoastaliens.com
typomag.com/burningchair
flesheatingpoems.blogspot.com
harpandaltar.com
saltgrasscontents.blogspot.com
tightjournal.blogspot.com

Ana Božičević moved to NYC from Croatia in 1997. She’s the author of chapbooks Document (Octopus Books, 2007) and Morning News (Kitchen Press, 2006). Look for her recent work in Denver Quarterly, Saltgrass, Hotel Amerika, absent, The New York Quarterly, Bat City Review, MiPOesias, Octopus Magazine and The Portable Boog Reader 2: An Anthology of NYC Poetry. Ana co-edits RealPoetik.

John Coletti is the author of The New Normalcy (BoogLit 2002), Physical Kind (Yo-Yo-Labs 2005), and Street Debris (Fell Swoop 2005), a collaboration with poet Greg Fuchs with whom he also co-edits Open 24 Hours Press. He currently is the editor of The Poetry Project Newsletter.

Kate Greenstreet is the author of case sensitive (Ahsahta Press, 2006) and three chapbooks, Learning the Language (Etherdome Press, 2005), Rushes (above/ground press, 2007), and This is why I hurt you (Lame House Press, April 2008). Her second book, The Last 4 Things, will be out from Ahsahta in 2009. Her poems can be found in journals like Cannibal, Fascicle, and Handsome. New work is forthcoming in Filling Station, Practice, and The Columbia Review.

Sarah Gridley is Poet in Residence and a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Case Western Reserve University. She received an MFA in poetry from the University of Montana in 2000, where she was a Richard Hugo scholar and won the 1999 Merriam Frontier Award for excellence in creative writing. The University of California Press published her book Weather Eye Open in 2005. She has recently completed a new poetry manuscript, whose poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Fourteen Hills, NEO, Harp & Altar, Crazy Horse, jubilat, Denver Quarterly, New American Writing, and Chicago Review.

Katy Henriksen was born and raised in the Arkansas Ozarks. She is the design editor of the poetry journal Cannibal, which she creates with her husband Matt Henriksen in their tiny railroad apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. She also helps run The Burning Chair Readings. Her music and culture writing may be found in Venus Zine, The Brooklyn Rail, Paste, Publishers Weekly, Puremusic.com, Rust Buckle, and elsewhere. Four of her poems are forthcoming in Tight.

Shannon Jonas is the author of Compathy (Cannibal Books, 2007) and lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Jennifer Kronovet is the author of Awayward (BOA Editions, 2009), selected by Jean Valentine as the winner of the Poulin Prize. Kronovet is the co-founder and co-editor of CIRCUMFERENCE, a journal of poetry in translation. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Colorado Review, Harp & Altar, Ploughshares, A Public Space, and other journals. She was born and raised in New York City, and has lived in Chicago, St. Louis, and Beijing.

Mark Lamoureux is a poet, critic and translator who lives in Astoria, NY. His work has appeared in numerous publications, both in print and online. He is an associate editor for Fulcrum Annual. He is the author of three chapbooks: City/Temple (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2003), 29 Cheeseburgers (Pressed Wafer, 2004) and Film Poems (Katalanche Press, 2005).

Timothy Liu is the author of six books of poems, most recently For Dust Thou Art. Two new books are forthcoming, Bending the Mind Around the Dream's Blown Fuse (Talisman House, 2008) and Polytheogamy (Saturnalia Press, 2009). His journals and papers are archived in the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library. Liu is currently an Associate Professor at William Paterson University and on the Core Faculty at Bennington College’s Writing Seminars; he lives in Manhattan.

Chris Martin is the author of American Music. His new book, Becoming Weather, is trying to become published. His newer book, On Song, is an ongoing investigation of song’s ontological use from the Caveman Days until Tonight. He is the editor of Puppy Flowers, an online magazine of the arts, and resides near the Prospect Park Zoo with a beautiful lady and her cat.

Jess Mynes is the author of Birds for Example, Coltsfoot Insularity (a collaboration with Aaron Tieger), In(ex)teriors, and Full on Jabber (a collaboration with Christopher Rizzo). He is the editor of Fewer & Further Press. In 2008, his If and When (Katalanche Press), Sky Brightly Picked (Skysill Press), Recently Clouds, and a second edition of In(ex)teriors (Anchorite Press) will be published. He lives in Wendell, MA where he co curates a reading series, All Small Caps. His poems have appeared in numerous publications.
Cate Peebles lives in Brooklyn and works at the literary agency, Sobel Weber Associates, in Manhattan. Her poems have appeared in, or are forthcoming from, Tin House, Octopus, La Petite Zine, MiPOesias, Capgun, and others. She co-edits the on-line poetry magazine, Fou.

Christopher Rizzo is a writer and publisher who lives in New York. Over the years, his work has appeared in Art New England, The Cultural Society, Cannibal, Dusie, H_NGM_N, and Spell among other magazines. Christopher has also authored several chapbooks, such as Claire Obscure (Katalanche Press, 2005), Zing (Carve Editions, 2006), and The Breaks (Fewer & Further Press, 2006). Full on Jabber, a collaborative work written with poet Jess Mynes, was released by Martian Press in 2007. Christopher also edits Anchorite Press, an independent poetry publisher of innovative work. He is a doctoral candidate in English at the University at Albany.
Matthew Rohrer is the author of five books of poetry, most recently RISE UP, published by Wave Books. He teaches in the creative writing program at NYU and lives in Brooklyn.

Frank Sherlock is the co-author of the newly released Ready-to-Eat Individual with Brett Evans.
Joanna Sondheim’s chapbooks, The Fit and Thaumatrope, were published by Sona Books in 2004 and 2007, respectively. Recent work appears in Unsaid magazine.

Shanxing Wang was born in Jinzhong, Shanxi province, China, in 1965. He moved to the U.S. in 1991 to pursue a PhD in mechanical engineering at University of California at Berkeley. While an assistant professor of engineering at Rutgers University, he began taking writing courses at Rutgers and later the Poetry Project, and subsequently received a Zora Neale Hurston Scholarship to attend the summer writing program at Naropa University in Colorado in 2003. His first book Mad Science in Imperial City (Futurepoem Books, 2005) won the 2006 Asian American Literary Award for Poetry. His current thinking and struggling focuses on intersections of poetry/poetics with physics/mathematics, history, visual arts, and continental philosophy. He is also a competitive table tennis player and a table tennis coach. He lives and writes in Queens and he has a blog: shanxingwang.blogspot.com.

Rebecca Wolff is the author of Manderley, Figment, and The King (forthcoming 2009). She is the publisher and editor of Fence, Fence Books, and The Constant Critic, and is a fellow of the New York State Writers Institute, with which Fence is affiliated. She lives in Athens, New York.

Pre-Ordering and Post-Packing

2008-04-29T12:32:00.005-05:00

Cue Issue 7 is ready for pre-order, w/ the usual suspects of ass-kicking miracle-babblers and rapturous lyricists. Chapbooks are forthcoming, too. While you're at it, you can pre-order Kate Greenstreet's This is why I hurt you forthcoming from Lame House Press (also of the Brooklyn re-exodus). Pre-ordering from small presses is a better method of fighting the down-turn in the economy than rooting for Obama.

Katy and I are nearly packed and very ready to abandon our Brooklyn slum-hole for the Ozarks en route to Chicago. That's a loop route.

2008-04-22T20:45:00.002-05:00

Aliens vs. Poetry in Greenpoint

2008-04-12T19:22:00.005-05:00

The Burning Chair Readings
present

a Chair Burning Retrospective
at East Coast Aliens

Friday, April 18th
Doors 7:30 pm, readings from 8-10 pm

Andrea Baker
Jim Behrle
Brenda Iijima
Dorothea Lasky
Tim Peterson
Thibault Raoult
Craig Morgan Teicher
Dara Wier

w/ music from
Walter Baker
& an after-party featuring
the dreams [of the congregation of details

East Coast Aliens
216 Franklin St
btwn. India & Huron
Greenpoint, Brooklyn
G to Greenpoint Ave (exit at India St)
B61/B43/B42

Author bios available at The Burning Chair.

"Tensions Rise at 95 Clay Street"

2008-03-26T16:11:00.005-05:00

Miss Heather of New York Shitty & Matthew Wolfe of the Greenpoint Courier have taken to writing about our humble (decrepit) building. We thought the second building slowly erecting in our courtyard (which previously was a huge refuse heap with a giant bunny our super's dogs eventually killed) was not fully legal. Turns out it's completely illegal and our rent should be going down, not up. In the photo from the second NYShitty piece, our building is the tall gray farthest to the left. We live on the far side, 2nd window down. Larkin is looking out the window right now. I have never thrown anything from the fire escape, or from the roof for that matter, unlike other places where I've lived.

How to Do Things with Years

2008-03-08T21:06:00.007-05:00

As days pass opening day seems farther away. Every season my brother and I have said unflinchingly "this is the year." But this season, with the best Cubs opening day roster I've ever seen, a healthier Lee, a quieter Zambrano, Wood throwing up to 98 mph, and Piniella wise to the Cubs' seemingly innate and possibly divine gift for monumental collapses, I demur from optimism. My grandfathers were born Cub fans and died without seeing a World Series win. But losing has its own embrace.

Life After Every Other Day

2008-02-28T16:12:00.003-05:00

Interviewed by Bree O'Connor for Jimmy's No. 43 stage blog.